Tools used by NCEO researchers for visualising, processing and modelling land processes.

This section depicts a list of resources suitable for visualizing, processing and modelling data for land processes. This collection includes tools for ecosystem and radiative transfer modelling; visualization and processing tools for optical and radar remote sensing data.

Tools for processing and analysing TLS point cloud data, in particular to extract individual trees from point clouds containing many trees. A series of iterative clustering, filtering and pruning operations carried out to assess the contents of a point cloud for tree objects and then to extract these, automatically. The result of this can then be used in quantitative reconstruction modelling tools.

3D EO simulation framework developed via ESA funding as part of the Support to Science Element (STSE). 3DVeglab provides an online toolbox of RT modelling tools to enable simulation of (optical) Sentinel 2, 3 and other sensors, for selected highly-detailed 3D modelled scenes.

The scenes were developed from RAMI simulated (synthetic) model scenes, and from detailed field measurements made at forest sites in Switzerland (Laegeren) and Germany (Tharandt). These measurements included very detailed TLS scans of branches and needles, enabling development of very detailed 3D scene models.

The 3D Veglab toolbox contains 2 different 3D MCRT models, librat developed at UCL and DART developed at CESBIO. 3DVeglab was developed to work as a plug-in module for the ESA BEAM toolkit.

Users can set up simulation scenarios, and upload model results, and then receive automated checking and certification against ROMC model ‘truth’. Allows a new model to be ‘validated’ in some sense, at least for a limited set of modelling scenarios where the result is known a priori. Developed by team at EU Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra, Italy in conjunction with the RAMI team.

Python modules for the creation of 3D scenes, running of simulations, and processing of results using librat. Primarily used with wavefront obj files created by the commercial software OnyxTree and developed for waveform lidar simulations of savanna tree/grass scenes.

3D Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (MCRT) model, for the optical domain. Widely-used in published work simulating EO reflectance data at a range of scales, as well as time-resolved lidar. Also used as ‘most credible’ surrogate RT models in successive phases of the RAMI exercise.

Code is developed as a stand-alone library of function calls, which can be included in user-developed C code (default) and Python.

Open source tool to process, analyse and visualise Earth Observation (EO) data from ESA’s missions and Third Party Missions. Developed to provide full support for ESA’s Sentinel missions (e.g., Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3) under a common architecture called Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP).
NCEO advice and support: Shaun Quegan and Jose Carreiras (Sheffield)